Team Möbius might not be back to work yet but two of our sub contractors were and Wow! did they and we ever make some great progress and hit some very eXciting new milestones. As per the title both of these sub contractors were in the glass business, one with “real” glass and the other with the acrylic based often colloquially referred to as plexiglass. For simplicity and clarity, I will use glass and plexi in this article.
By whatever name you prefer, we were definately up to our ass (ets) in glass this week. We have glass for all the 360 degrees of windows surrounding the SuperSalon or Pilothouse, glass in all the 10 deck hatches, another 360 degrees of tinted glass around the bottom panels of the SkyBridge coaming, glass for the Guest Shower door, glass tiles in the Master Head/Bathroom, plexi for the 360 degrees of windows around the entire SkyBridge, and then of course the “pièce de résistance en verre” the etched glass corner walls for the Master Shower.
As you are about to see then, it is really not just typical eXaggeration from your author to say that I was up to my assets in glass this week! And before I torture you any further with this play on words, let’s just jump right into this week’s Show & Tell so you can see for yourself.
Pilothouse/SuperSalon Window Glass
There were a bunch more milestones this week but the biggest one for Christine and I was to see this truck load of glass from Hakan Glass here in Antalya, arrive with all the glass that will close in the whole Pilothouse.*
* This area of our boat and all the XPMs can be called either Pilothouse, Wheelhouse or our moniker of “SuperSalon” but for clarity I’ll stick with just PH for the rest of this article OK?
BTW, many of you might be surprised to know that Turkey is one of the world’s largest glass manufacturers! With thanks to Baris at Naval Yachts for providing me this information, you can check out the factory where our glass was made HERE. This will give you a bit more information on “Paşabahçe” which is the biggest glass factory in the republic of Turkey’s and responsible for making glass one of Turkey’s top industries economically. For those interested in more about the long history of glass manufacturing in Turkey be sure to check out THIS site that does a great job of walking you quickly through the history from when Atatürk started all this in 1934.
The reason this is such a big milestone for us is that once all the window glass is installed around the 360 degrees of the PH along with these square glass pieces which will be adhered to each of the ten Deck Hatches, Möbius is WATERTIGHT!
As you may recall seeing in previous months, all the Watertight doors are in and so once the PH and Deck Hatch glass is all in, we are fully weather and water tight! In addition to the glass windows for the PH and the Deck Hatches, the truck also had the slender glass panels that wrap around the bottom edge of the SkyBridge coaming. First challenge though was to get each of these eXtremely heavy pieces of glass off the truck ……………… ……. up the stairs leading up to the Swim Platform ………..
……. then up the winding stairs onto the Aft Deck ………….. …… and then onto the wood pallet on the Aft Deck …….. …….. where they will be stored before being moved into their respective aluminium window frames.
Whew! This shot showing the edges of two of the PH glass windows on the Left and 7 of the Deck Hatch glass panels will help you see why these glass panels are so heavy. The PH glass windows are made from triple laminations of 8mm / 5/16” thick glass and the Deck Hatch glass is made from double laminations of 8mm glass. With three 8mm glass laminations plus two layers of laminating adhesive which are each about 1mm thick, each of the PH glass windows ends up about 26mm or just over 1” thick. These are but a few of the glass windows required:
20 pieces for the PH windows
12 pieces for the SkyBridge “eyebrow”
10 pieces for the Deck Hatches
Each one of these PH glass windows have been custom cut to match the exact sizes of plywood templates the Hakan Glass team had made a few weeks ago so each one is a bit different but on average each window weighed about 22kg / 48 lbs and so this all started with a LOT of heavy lifting! For adhesive, after consulting with the application experts at Hakan Glass and at Sikaflex, we chose Sikaflex 296 along with ….. ……. with SP-206GP primer.
This is the best combination for structural adhesion between glass and aluminium and is often what you see used on commercial buildings whose exterior surfaces are clad with glass. The process begins with the application of the Sikaflex SP-206GB primer that goes on both the aluminium surfaces that the glass will be bonded to ………. ……….. and the inner perimeter of the glass that will be adhered to the aluminium. Once the primer is cured, each window can be carefully carried from the Aft Deck to its respective window bay. Then a thick bead of Sikaflex 296 is laid down around the outer perimeter of the aluminium window frame. Having the right tools for the job always helps and this Milwaukee cordless caulking gun sure beats all the years I’ve had to hand pump window caulking.
The triple aluminium suction cup is one of many we used to lift the window glass into place and push/pull into the right position. Previously that day I had gone around and pulled the leather window mullion covers away from their frames where we have used the new plastic style of “velcro” to hold them in place and I had run a wide strip of Blue painters tape along the Rosewood edges in case any of the Sikaflex oozed its way there. Next PH window glass ready to be lifted into place … ….. and pressed firmly into place. The Sikaflex 296 both bonds the aluminium and the glass to each other as well as filling in the gap between the aluminium faces of the window frames which can have a bit of waviness to them, and the perfectly flat glass surfaces. Typically the thickness of the Sikaflex ends up being about 5mm / 0.2”. small wooden spacers are used to keep the glass edges an equal distance away from the AL frames. Some scrap pieces of Teak (who knew there was such a thing??) were pressed into service to act as spring loaded pressure clamps …. …….. to keep these negatively raked front windows tight up against the frames overnight while the Sikaflex cured. Similar process on the other end where there are three panes of glass along the Aft end of the Galley. It is pretty much a “rinse and repeat” process from there to put all 20 glass windows into place. Pardon the mess but this will help show you how it all looks from inside. This is the Aft Starboard/Right corner of the SuperSalon where the Galley is. This is looking forward from the Galley towards the Bow. If you look closely you might be able to see that these five front windows are all completely clear glass where the rest of the side and rear windows have a slight Gray tint to them as they have a UV blocking film on the inside surface of one of the laminations. With no glass in the Left window and one of the tinted ones on the Right you can see the amount of tint the side and rear windows have.
Tinting is one of those things you want to get to that Goldilocks just right point but it is difficult to judge or calculate other than by experience in situ. So we will live with the glass like this for the first year or so and then decide if we want to add a film to the inside surfaces for more privacy blocking or heat blocking as some of the newer window films that are now available are truly amazing.
This is how the outside is shaping up when viewed from down on the shop floor.
Also a preview of what I’ll show you next which is the glass “eyebrow” around the bottom edges of the SkyBridge coaming up above.
Clint Eastwood’s Squint
This early rendering will help show you how the exterior will look when all glassed in and you can see the thin band of tinted glass that runs around the edge of the coaming (walls) of the upper SkyBridge. Several years ago now when we were working with our awemazing NA and designer Dennis Harjamaa at Artnautica Yacht Design in Auckland NZ, he jokingly remarked that the combination of shapes …… ……. of the narrowing vertical height of the PH glass as it makes the transition forward/aft along with the thin upper height of the tinted SkyBridge glass, reminded him of that squint that Clint Eastwood made famous in his early western movies. We all got a good laugh out of we have kept referring to the Clint Eastwood Squint ever since. Clint is always a good guy to have on YOUR side so we figure this helps add to our “Don’t mess with me!” look. Here you can see the framing that wraps around the SkyBridge. The narrow bottom frames are about to be filled with tinted glass and next week the upper frames will be filled with plexi. Same process as with the PH glass; apply the Sikaflex Primer to the outer perimeter of the AL frames and the glass …….. ……. run a generous bead of 296 around the AL frames …….. ….. and press the glass into place.
Rinse and Repeat. Aft Stbd/Right corner all done. Front 3 panels in place too. Here is how it looks so far when viewed from the inside.
And here is what it looked like by end of the day on Friday.
Last two PH windows still to go in next week.
Deck Hatch Glass
We have a total of ten hatches spread out on the decks of Möbius and they all have double laminated glass lids on them.
You may recall seeing these Deck Hatches which I designed back at the beginning of the build and then Team Möbius built them in house. They have been sitting and waiting for their glass tops so it was eXtremely exciting for me to see this last part of the puzzle fit into place.
Each hatch will have one of these double laminated glass panels bonded to them. Two 6mm glass laminations with about 1mm of adhesive and the thickness of the black film inside creates eXtremely strong glass lids that are about 14mm thick. The hinged aluminium hatch lids are made from 10mm / the 3/8” thick AL plate and so each of the glass hatch lids have black film sandwiched between the two laminations that matches up with the shape of the AL lids where they will be bonded to the glass. First Deck Hatch to get its lid was this one on the Port/Left side of the Aft Deck.
We carry quite a few of these suction cup tools with us as they come on handy for SO many different jobs. We use them to give us a handle on the bottom of the hull when we are cleaning it every few months Hookah “Snuba” setup and we also use them to remove and replace the FastMount panels on the interior of the boat. This hatch is directly overtop of my workbench in the Workshop down below and I can already feel those breezes wafting down on me and the sunlight pouring in as I work down there. The Hakan boys prepping the AL hatch lid in front of the Port/Left Vent Box which is #4 in the hatch layout diagram up above. You can see the shape of the AL lids with their cross bar that matches up with the black film you see on the hatch glass. Same process repeated as with the PH glass; first apply the Sikaflex primer to both the AL bonding surfaces ……. and the glass surfaces. Butter the AL with a generous bead of 296 and press the glass into place. Sikaflex 296 takes several hours to cure so you have lots of time to nudge the glass into the Goldilocks position so that the gap is perfectly even around all four sides of the hatch opening. Both of the smaller 400mm / 16” hatches in front of the two Vent Boxes on the Aft Deck are all done. These two Vent Boxes also create our Outside Galley. Seen from the Stbd/Right side of the Aft Deck to see those same two hatches as well as the larger 700mm / 28” square hatch underneath the spiral staircase leading up to the SkyBridge. These are numbers 4, 5 and 6 in the hatch layout diagram above. Popping up into the SkyBridge to check out Hatch #7 on the “day bed” up there beside the SkyBridge Helm Station.
Our Llebroc Helm Chair is what is underneath all that plastic wrapping in case you are wondering.
This hatch will be eXtremely helpful and open most of the time as it allows us to easily talk with each other when one is in this Upper Helm and the other is down below in the Galley or SuperSalon. Also makes it easy to pass up a coffee or meal from the Galley below. Here are a few shots of how these hatches look from the inside. This one is about centered in the Guest Cabin which will most often be configured as Christine’s Office. This smaller one is directly above Christine’s Office desk so she too will have plenty of fresh air when this hatch is open and lots of natural sunlight all the time. Lots of fresh air and light pouring into the Guest Shower as well. Back up on the Aft Deck, I wanted to double check the glass clearances so I brought up one sheet of TreadMaster that we will soon be applying to all the deck surfaces. The Treadmaster will be about 5mm thick once glued down with West Systems epoxy adhesive so I designed the hatch geometry such that the top surface of the glass sits about 2mm above the AL Deck surfaces. This way the glass surfaces will be just slightly lower than the top surface of the Treadmaster and be very foot friendly.
For those wondering, we will be putting multiple strips of non skid tape across each Glass Hatch so they are very safe to walk on.
GUEST SHOWER GLASS
Based on your comments, many of you will think that I have saved the best for last as all the glass for our Guest and Master Heads/Bathrooms and Showers also arrived this week! Different company that specializes in shower glass and they arrived on Thursday as well to do the installation. This is the simplest part, the clear glass door into the Guest Shower. This door has a full height anodized AL hinge that bolts directly to the Rosewood door jamb. Then a matching AL channel on the opposite side …. …… with the magnetic silicone seal, handle and latch.
Works great in the “dry run” and we will test it out with a real shower after we launch.
MASTER SHOWER GLASS:
Moving up to the Master Cabin Head/Shower/Bathroom, they installed this clear glass separator between the Shower on the Left and Bathroom counter and cabinets on the right. As you can see we designed this partition to stop short of the ceiling so that all the fresh air pouring in through that big 700mm square hatch up above can flow into both the Shower and the Head/Bathroom. And as if we didn’t have enough going on aboard Möbius Thursday and Friday, the tile man showed up to install the glass tile accent on the side wall of the Head! Christine had picked these glass tiles out months ago and they have been patiently waiting to come out of their box and be where they belong.
Wasn’t a big job so he was literally done in less than 2 hours and we think this little detail adds just the right amount of colour and texture to this otherwise all white room.
But of course what really stole the show this week is this “pièce de résistance en verre” , the two etched glass corner walls for the Master Shower. The more narrow 700mm wide wall panel goes athwartships and then the wider 1200mm panel goes in lengthwise to create this gorgeous etched class corner. Very simple mounting of the glass into rabbets in the Rosewood panels surrounding each glass plate which are then filled with clear silicone to hold them in place.
Blue Painters tape and some wood shims at the bottom were all that are neccessary to get them all lined up and ready for the silicone adhesive/sealant.
BTW, ALL of the credit for this work of art goes to our dearest friend Sherry Cooper in Vancouver BC. If you have not already seen THIS blog post from two weeks ago where I covered her work in more details, please do go check that out.
If you don’t have time for that and want to find out more about Sherry you can check out her other works HERE and HERE as well as her Instagram page HERE. Below is a quick synopsis of what I wrote.
Christine and I worked with Sherry to describe as best we could what we wanted to achiever with these etched patterns which was things such as a marine/nautical theme, a taste of First Nation people’s art from the British Columbia area we know and love and to have all this captured in a somewhat abstract and ethereal way.
This is what Sherry came up with and we think the nailed it! A perfect example of our favorite Goldilocks; just right, just for us type of result.
Stepping back a bit to try to show how the whole thing will look when done. Even with all the plastic protective coating and painters tape this work of art and engineering shines through with almost blinding beauty.
Difficult to capture the inside of this small space but this will hopefully give you a rough idea of what the finished shower will look like and just how magical it will be taking a shower in here every morning!
I got more work done on the cogged belt drive system that is going onto Mr. Gee to drive one of our two Electrodyne “Big Red” 250Amp @ 28V alternators and the Jabsco sea water pump but it is already very late Sunday night here so I will cover all that for you next week.
But WAIT! There’s more!!
Speaking of “assets”, the winter rains are about to arrive here in Antalya, as early as tonight according to Christine’s weather apps so we took advantage of today being a truly sunny Sunday, to go for a nice long bike ride along the eXtremely well done bike paths along the 20+ kilometers of the crescent shaped beachfront that Antalya stretches along. Like most places in the world right now we are under stronger restrictions but we are allowed out in the mornings so we took advantage of that for this bike ride and stopped for a lovely little picnic lunch on this stone beach section for an hour or so before heading home to write up this blog. The Med here is still plenty warm enough for swimming and it was almost too hot in the sun here just before noon. All of this adding to the hundreds of other things that both Christine and I have to be SO thankful for as we wish all our American friends and family the very best for their Thanksgiving weekend.
Thank you all SO much for taking time to join me here again this week AND for adding your comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below!
Hopefully Team Möbius is back next week and we will have much more progress to show you.
Seven years ago today, this little fella, aka Barney the Yorkshire Terror, changed my life in ways and degrees that I am still unable to fully comprehend.
More accurately, it was seeing him for the first time in the short 25 second video below that captured my attention, so take a look and a listen and then come on on back for the rest of this wonderful story.
Friday November 22nd, 2013 started out no different than any other of my days in Fiji at Vuda Point Marina, where I, ably assisted by Ruby the Wonderdog, was working feverishly to complete the latest and largest renovation on my 52’ steel sailboat sv Learnativity. As with most such boat projects it was taking MUCH longer than expected and I was working non-stop because the Cyclone season begins in November and I should have left for Majuro in the Marshall Islands long before now. (click to enlarge the map or any photo) These two maps will fill in some of the geographic information and the short story is that in general, as a liveaboard sailor, to be outside of the cyclone zone in the South Pacific, you want to be no more than 10 degrees from the equator. Vuda Pt. Marina is on the far SW corner of Fiji sits at 17º41’04”S 177º23’02”E so it well into the Cyclone Zone and yes, you can ask me how I know!
The atoll of Majuro, pictured here, is at 7.0667° N, 171.2667° E is well below the 10 degree limit and I had been there twice before to get out of the Cyclone Zone and just loved it so I was anxious to get back there ASAP.
If it were a straight line, the passage to sail those 24 degrees from Fiji at 17° S to Majuro at 7° N is about 2895 km/1799 miles/1563 nm but the actual sea miles of this passage are about 2000 nm, assuming not much tacking, would typically be about a 14-15 day sail. But for me, a stop in the tiny spec of an island called Rotuma is a must. Rotuma is a much longer and fascinating story which I serendipitously stumbled upon when I read that it was still part of Fiji even though it is WAY up in the far NW corner about 500 nm from any other part of Fiji which meant I could wait till I got to Rotuma and still officially check out of Fiji.
So this stop over adds a few days to the passage and has taken me 17-18 days in the past. OK, Wayne but what the heck does this have to do with the Barney video that changed your life so incredibly?
Ahhh, right.
So back aboard the good ship Learnativity, that Friday morning 7 years ago, Ruby the Wonderdog (my little Black Spoodle who had been with me since I started my single handed sailing adventures in San Francisco in March 2007), and I were up just after sunrise as usual for most sailors, had fixed my breakfast and was sipping my morning Latte and enjoying yet another beautiful sunny morning up in the cockpit of LTY (Learnativity).
This was typically the only time each day when I could sit and relax a wee bit catch up with all the Emails and other online content that had come in the past 24 hours. As I was zipping through all those Emails I came across an auto-generated one informing me that there was a new post on the Write on the Water blog which was of the several hundred blogs that I subscribe to on a wild range of topics.
Little did I know that clicking on that link was going to be one of the most life changing events of my already VERY eventful life!
Seeing that “Write on the Water” name, I vaguely recalled that I had been subscribed to this blog several years ago because, Christine Kling, one of four writers/sailors who wrote one post a week on Write on the Water (get it?), and she was not only an author of some very good best seller mystery novels, she was also a fellow single handed and very experienced sailor, currently sailing around the Caribbean islands on her sailboat sv Tale Spinner from her home Port in Ft. Lauderdale Florida.
The link opened up the blog post fine, but there was no text, no story? Simply the Title “Barney the Yorkshire Terror” and that little face staring up at me with a “Click to Play” button on his nose. I hit Play and as I suspect he might have just done for you, Barney gave ma a good morning chuckle. It also piqued my curiosity as to how this cute little animated dog video had been made? So I quickly fired off a short comment to the author which just happen to have saved and it reads;
Wayne says: November 22, 2013 at 07:17 am (Fiji Time) Very cute and fun Christine. I too am out single handed sailing with my 6 year old “Spoodle” Ruby the Wonderdog and we are currently in Vuda Pt. marina in Fiji finishing up the latest refit in preparation for the next few years sailing through the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and making my way through Indonesia. I’d be interested to know more about how you made this little video if you care to share? Also enjoying your books and have several loaded on my Kindle for upcoming passages. Thanks for all. Wayne
I finished up my coffee and Email updates and got back to work on Learnativity.
Next morning, same routine and as I was enjoying my first coffee and going through the latest Emails, one was a WordPress comment from the Write on the Water blog, which thanks to the wonders of cloud storage and my somewhat geeky nature, I also still have a copy of so you can read it for yourself.
Apparently two of Christine’s blog followers had asked the same question so as you can see her response was to both Wayne and Gerald. Nice of her to respond I thought as so many such questions go unanswered, and so being Canadian and just doing what I think is important, I wrote back a short note to thank her for getting back to me and that I would try out this little “My Talking Pet” app and maybe use it to make one with Ruby the Wonderdog. And then it was back to work for me and I never gave it another thought.
Well, as I was to learn weeks later, Christine was quite taken aback that someone had actually said “Thank You” ? Apparently when she dutifully answers all the thousands of questions a famous author receives, she rarely receives anything but more questions and never a Thank You. Who knew???
And so she wrote me back, and the following Email was on my screen as I was sipping my first coffee the next day: (click to enlarge if you want to read it)
No need to read the whole Email, but if you do, you will see what a catastrophic error she makes in the very first sentence when she starts off with; “Hi Wayne, Thank you so much for the interesting note full of info about you and your boat. I love getting long emails, so don’t ever worry about writing too much.”
Oh the poor innocent dear! She has NO idea that she is saying that to Mr. Neveraparagraphwhenasentencewilldo! Though she might have started to clue in when I wrote back:
I will spare my full response, lucky you!! and just share the first of my brief four page Email response. Not to worry, I am NOT about to share ALL our Emails back and forth in the coming days and weeks, again Lucky, Lucky you!
Suffice it to say, that the Email exchanges got longer and longer and more and more often.
Then Emails led to voice calls which followed my same “brevity challenged” arc.
Voice calls quickly led to Skype calls and let’s just say neither one of us got too much sleep in those first two weeks or so as we were living literally on the opposite sides of the world and I was on the other side of the International Date Line so we were not only many hours apart in different Time Zones, we were also on different days! Hence we were both on Skype calls in either the wee hours of our respective mornings or on very late night hours. Our internet connection had quite literally become the “International Date Line”.
Think about it for a minute and I’ll wait till you get it ……………………………….
OK, OK, enough already Wayne!!
You know where this is going so let me just quickly summarize what happened from there.
Video calls are fascinating, especially when you start logging hundreds of hours of them with someone you have never met. They pretty much cancel out any chances that either of you can be “faking it”, so you do end up learning more and more about the very real person on that screen for hours and in your ears and in hour head. But it still isn’t the same as the “real thing” and so at some point we started to talk about how, when and where we could meet up in person and find out if all the sparks that were flying back and forth through the ether were really real or just our twitterpated imaginations?
It was now December and so my first suggestions had been that I would sail up to Majuro and get Learnativity safely moored there as I had done in the past few years and then get the short flight from Majuro to Honolulu which happens 3 days a week and we could meet there. A bit longer but easy to get flights for Christine to fly from Florida to Honolulu and so that was the tentative plan. Emphasis on “tentative” of course because WAYNE still needed to finish the work on LTY, get her all sea worthy and ship shape for a relatively long passage and only then be able to know what sort of dates we could fly and meet.
Of course things never go as planned, especially when it comes to big boat projects. I was working longer and longer days, as was Christine who was in the midst of finishing and publishing her latest book at the time “Dragon’s Triangle” and we were both getting more and more frustrated that our “Launch Date” for this distant blooming romance seemed to be getting more and more elusive and later.
Hmmm, why does that sound so familiar??
Several hours into one of our Skype calls at that time, partly out of pure frustration, partly for some levity, I said something like “You know what would be really crazy, would be if you just flew here to Fiji and we could have our first date be the sail up to Rotuma and Majuro”.
Keep in mind that it is now only about two weeks before Christmas and I was sure that she would not want to be away from her family in Florida over the holidays so maybe Honolulu in the New Year would be best after all. So we started to look a the calendar and figure out the likely length of my sail up to Majuro and what dates early in the New Year we might be able to fly there and meet. So I simply asked “What date do you think you could fly?” And surely she understood I was talking about her flying to Honolulu right?
I had already learned that Christine can have some VERY “pregnant pauses” with her responses so I just patiently waited after asking what date she thought she could fly as I watched her eyes look up as if she was searching some calendar on the ceiling and then watched her lips moving a bit as she seemed to be doing some calculations in her head. After several minutes of this, she looked back at me on the screen and said “Tuesday”.
Huh? “Tuesday” I said? What do you mean “Tuesday”?
Never missing a beat and with a very quizzical look on her most serious face, she said; “I can be in Fiji on Tuesday.”
This was all happening late on a Friday night on Christine’s side of the International Date Line and in a very rare for me “pregnant pause” with my mind reeling with what I thought I had just heard I think I simply said “Are you kidding me?!?!?!”
She wasn’t kidding and while I don’t remember much of those next few days, I found myself standing in the Nadi airport early on the morning of December 19, 2013 intently watching the passengers of the just landed red-eye flight from LAX walk to the baggage claim when THIS vision of loveliness walked through those glass doors and into my heart. We drove back to the marina where I had Learnativity pretty much finished and waiting for her to see for the first time and we were both giddy with excitement, nervousness and disbelief that this was all REALLY happening?!!!
I had borrowed my dear friends Ian and Coleen’s car to drive the 25km or so to the Nadi airport from Vuda Pt. Marina as their beautiful big boat mv Summer Spirt and had been my dock neighbors as you can see here, for all the months I had been there in Fiji over the last few years.
This is our first photo together, thanks Coleen, on the aft deck of Summer Spirit. Ian and Coleen invited us over to mv Summer Sprit for lunch and so they could meet this mysterious woman who their dockside friend Wayne had been talking with and about endlessly for the past month. Fast forwarding through the months and years that followed:
We had a VERY eventful 18 day “First Date” passage up to Majuro and that’s a much longer story for another time. Captain of my heart by now and the only REAL sailor onboard. We made it to Rotuma for another longer story of our first New Year’s Eve. Crossed the equator for the first time as a couple after multiple times by ourselves. And Wayne was FINALLY able to swim across the equator, yet another much longer story for another time. Sailed into the atoll of Major with no rudder and no steering. Another story for another time.
Flew back to Florida to meet Christine’s family there, then flew to St. Martin to drop of Ruby with our dearest friends the Alonso’s who were living there on their boat sv Discovery.
Took off a few days later for a whirlwind tour of Europe that Christine had previously all planned out as research for her next book that became “Knight’s Cross”. First stop the island of Malta Where I proposed up on a grassy hillside overlooking a little harbour in Malta. And she said YES!!!
OK, OK OK!!! Seriously this time, ENOUGH WAYNE!!!!
More of those stories for another time.
Right now, I sit here in Antalya Turkey with my Beautiful Bride of six years making us another one of her delicious meals and we have a bottle of bubbly in the fridge that I’m about to go pop so we can celebrate the 7th anniversary of our First Contact.
Which was all thanks to THIS little guy who is sitting here at my feet tonight.
Thanks Barney!
I am the luckiest and richest man in the world all thanks to YOU! Happy Anniversary!
As you read this week’s Progress Update below you will understand what I am referencing in this week’s title as to how we solved the most recent challenge in the building of XPM78-01 Möbius by going under rather than over the problem. Unfortunately on Friday (did it matter that it was the 13th?) we were hit by a much different and much more challenging problem which there is just no getting over, around or under, when several workers at Naval Yachts tested positive and there was no choice but to shut the whole company for the next 17 days and do all the contact tracing and testing of all those employees who have been in direct contact. If all goes well Naval, and certainly Christine and I, hope to reopen on November 30th. I’m sure you join us in wishing everyone involved the very best wishes and that there are no serious health consequences for any of us here.
To be clear and not cause any undue concern on your part, as good fortune would have it, neither Christine or myself have had any direct contact with any of these workers for the past two weeks. Furthermore, we have always been very self disciplined with our precautions of wearing masks any time there is any possibility of being in a place with others or where others have been recently such as the elevators in our apartment. We are both quite naturally introverts and previous single handed sailors so it has been relatively easy for us to keep to ourselves and staying as much as possible. And we are both quite fit and healthy, especially for two sixty somethings so I am pleased to let you know that we both feel very fit, healthy and happy and are doing everything we can to stay that way.
This may be as my kids used to say “TMI Dad!!”, as in Too Much Information to share, but the value of these kinds of blogs come in large part through their openness, transparency and honesty so I felt the need to share this brief insight into what is going on here and why there will not be much progress to report on for the remainder of this month of November. Hopefully all will go well and Naval will reopen on Nov. 30th with all of us healthy so we can hit the ground running and get Möbius finished and launched ASAP.
Now back to our regular programming as I think they used to say on radio and TV, as I do have several fun and exciting things to update you on from aboard the good ship Möbius for the week that was November10th through 13th.
I think it is quite true that laughter is the best medicine so let me start by sharing this fun cartoon, courtesy of the appropriately named Bizarrow Comics who focuses on such topics as Pirates, Cowboys, Snowmen, Doctors, well you get the idea.
This was one of their Daily Comics this past week and it must have been making the rounds on the internet as several of you sent this to us right about the same time Christine and I were both seeing it. Thanks Matt et al!
How appropriate and fun for us right?
Getting Under Mr. Gee
Let’s move on to the reference in this week’s title to a problem that we were able to solve by going under rather than over it. To put it in context, this was part of Hussein and I working on the alignment of the whole “propulsion” unit formed by Mr. Gee being bolted to the Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox which in turn is bolted to the big 65mm / 2.6” SS prop shaft which has the big bronze 1 meter / 39.4” four bladed CPP prop on its far end.
That is a long description that is hard to track and I have received quite a few questions and comments about both the Nogva CPP (Controllable Pitch Propeller) and this whole alignment process so for those interested, let me break it down and provide more details.
Here is my very rough sketch from over a year ago when we were figuring out the exact dimensions for installing the aluminium Nogva Prop Log which is the “pipe” you see over on the far Left here. I’m hoping that this will give you the big picture view that helps to show how this Propulsion System is one solid mass from the front of the Gardner in Blue on the far Right, through the Nogva Servo Gearbox in Brown in the middle with the two flanges connecting to the Fwd/Right end of the prop shaft and over through the Prop Log, out through the end of the skeg where the CPP propeller in Green sits.
Here is the dimensioned drawing from the Nogva engineers I worked with to design this custom CPP system for Möbius. It shows how the Propeller Shaft runs inside the larger inside diameter Prop Log Tube This is the drawing above with some of the many dimensions I was pulling off of the actual installation at the time so I could double check that my 3D model of all this was exactly the same dimensions as the real deal.
No need for you to pay any attention to all these dimensions but I thought that this front to back view might be helpful for those trying to visualise this whole setup and see the relationships between all the individual parts. Next up, let’s take a look at the six anti-vibration “feet” or mounts where Mr. Gee and the Nogva CPP are attached to the 25mm/1” thick engine beds running the full length of both sides of the Engine Room. I have never had enough time to create a full 3D model of Mr. Gee so you will have to use your imagination in the blank space to the Left of the Red Nogva Servo Gearbox, but hopefully this quick render of my Fusion 360 model will help you see how these six feet connect the whole Propulsion System to the Hull. I initially created this 3D model when I was designing these custom brackets that bolt to Mr. Gee’ thick cast AL crankcase and create the eXtremely strong and rigid attachment points for the vertical threaded adjustment rods on each foot/mount. Front mount is on the Left, Rear on the Right and both of these feet/mounts are the same anti-vibration models with thick rubber isolation blocks inside. This is what those Front & Rear anti-vibration mounts look like and of course Mr. Gee requires the MMXL version! Back in the real world inside the Engine Room, this is Mr. Gee’s Front Port/Left foot after we have lifted the whole Propulsion System up with big chain hoists to drill the holes for the M16 Grade 8 bolts that will hold each mount solidly to the Engine Beds in precisely the right location Fore/Aft and Left/Right. Here is a closer view of the mounting bracket I designed to be welded into the underside of the two Engine Beds and how these two different style of feet connect the Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox to the Engine Beds and Hull. Also a good shot of the output flange on the Aft end which is what need to get so precisely aligned with the matching flange on the forward end of the Prop Shaft. Here is what these highly specialised feet/mounts on the Nogva look like in the manufacturers catalogue before I purchased them. These start out being the same as any other feet/mounts by providing the rubber isolation that separates the upper body with the threaded rod from the metal base that bolts to the Engine Beds. However if you look closely you will see that there are also two large diameter SS pins going side to side across the Base through the elongated oval shaped rubber isolation block. Here is a bit closer view one of those two Nogva feet in my hand to try and show you those two pins and the rubber isolation block. Why are the Nogva mounts different than Mr. Gee’s some of you have asked. Because in addition to providing the anti-vibration connection to the Engine Beds these also deal with the very significant THRUST forces which would otherwise be trying to push/pull the whole Propulsion System fore and aft as the propeller “bites” into the water and pushes the boat forward or reverse. The Nogva Servo Gearbox is built to be mounted solidly to a hull with no anti-vibration mounts in large commercial vessels so it also has its own thrust bearing setup inside to fully deal with all these eXtreme Thrust forces. However with one of our first principles being Comfort, the addition of these specialised thrust feet/mounts will help eliminate the transmission of vibration and noise to the hull and make for an eXtremely smooth and quiet boat when underway.
This is what the real deal looks like as we were drilling the mounting bolt holes in the Engine Beds, hence all the AL chips.
Good shot of the custom Rear brackets bolted to Mr. Gee on the Left side and the underslung bracket for the Nogva feet/mounts over on the Right. Putting it all together, this shows you the whole Port/Left side of the Propulsion System with all three mounting brackets and their feet/mounts.
But hang on a minute …………………………………………
………………………… what the heck is that underneath Mr. Gee?!?!?!?!?!?
Let’s zoom in a bit closer to find out……………… Aha! So THAT is what this week’s title is referring to about “ When you can’t get Over it; Get Under it!”.
So what was the problem that required raising the whole Propulsion up in the air and me spending all day Thursday up close and personal with Mr. Gee’s underbelly?
Well, as Murphy’s Law would have it, when Hussein drilled those two holes for the middle two feet on the Aft end of Mr. Gee, they turned out to be right on top of a 15mm thick vertical AL stringer running down the length of each Engine Bed. Ugh! This meant that while the threaded ends of the mounting bolts could go through there was no space for the washers and nuts underneath!!! Grrrrrrrrr
Going back to this render you can see that 15mm vertical stringer underneath the Front foot/mount where it was NOT a problem as the mounting bolts are further off centerline but if you follow that stringer Aft/Right you can see how it runs right through the centerline of the two bolts in the Aft Foot/Mount on Mr. Gee and hence this problem.
The solution? A rectangular slot was going to need to be cut into the stringer where it was welded to the underside of the Engine Bed to create enough space for the thick washers and nuts to slide into.
We tried to solve this problem by going Over the Engine Beds but as you can perhaps see, there wasn’t enough room to get in there with drills, Dremel tools, chisels and files. We could have used a plasma gun but it would have spewed molten aluminium all over the Engine Room so that was a non-starter.
*someone* was going to need to go at this problem from the UNDER side. As you may recall from seeing Hussein in some previous posts and down below, there as simply no way HE was going to fit in there, so guess who was elected??? No recount needed by the way!
With the Propulsion System firmly blocked up on all four corners I could pull out some of my Houdini moves and slither into this space with my headlamp and use various WMD, Weapons of Mass Deletion, to cut a rectangular slot in the vertical stringer under the four bolt holes. I was one pooped Pirate when I finally got home to my Captain at the end of the day but it worked as planned and there was now plenty of room for the nuts and washers for the bolts for these two middle feet/mounts to thread into. Whew!
Going back in time a bit, in order to lift the whole Propulsion System up in the air so I could get underneath to cut those four slots, Hussein, Nihat and I had rigged up these two lengths of square steel tubing that Nihat had welded large D-rings to the middle underside and spanned the big hatch in the Aft Deck. We then hooked a large chain hoist onto each D-ring and connected their bottom hooks to straps around the front end of Mr. Gee and the built in lifting eye on the Nogva.
It all worked very well and also gave us a very safe and precise way just barely to take the weight off of the six feet/mounts so we could move them in their Goldilocks Just Right locations as we fully align the two flanges which is the next step in this process.
ALIGNING the PROPULSION SYSTEM:
This is the first part of the alignment challenge: get that male threaded end of the CPP Pitch Push/Pull rod coming out of the center of the Prop Shaft, PERFECTLY aligned with the female threaded Pitch Piston protruding out of the center of the output flange on the Nogva Servo Gearbox.
The prop shaft and pitch rod are fixed in position so they can’t move Up/Down or Left/Right, they both just rotate concentric with each other. So the alignment has to happen by changing the angle of the Propulsion System.
It is a slow and exacting process where we slide the feet/mounts to adjust the Left/Right position of the centre of the Nogva Pitch Piston/Flange and then adjust those big adjustment nuts on the vertical threaded rods on each of the six feet to change the angle of the Propulsion System and move the centre of the Pitch Piston/Flange Up/Down in the process.
It took several hours going back and forth from measuring and checking the Aft end here and then into the ER to tweak the six big adjustment nuts but as you can see here, we eventually hit the Goldilocks Jackpot and had the Push/Pull Pitch rod dead on center and ready to be threaded into the Pitch Piston. It was slow going turning the Pitch Piston with a wrench on those two flats so the bulb finally went on for me and I blocked the end of the wrench in position and then went outside and down to the Propeller and kept pressure pushing it forward while I rotated the bit 4 blade prop as if it were some eXtremely long bolt and that worked perfectly. The last bit of precision is to get the length of that exposed threaded section of the Push/Pull rod above, to be precisely 7.5mm away from the aft end of the hex locknut as per the Nogva installation Manual you see here. It can actually be between 5-10mm so I set it at the middle of this range at 7.5mm and torqued the locknut down to 100nm.
* for those curious, “Servo bevegelse 50mm” is Norwegian for “Servo Travel = 50mm”. 25mm on each side of “neutral” or Zero Pitch.
With the Pitch Push/Pull rod all centred and locked in place I could now put on the two split halves of this Red Prop Flange and start the second phase of the alignment process. This has two components to it; getting the mating flange surfaces precisely parallel to each other and also getting the two flanges equally perfectly aligned with each other axially. These two figures from the Nogva installation manual shows these two alignments very clearly and as you can see it needs to be eXtremely precise, no more than 0.05mm / .002”. FYI, this is the thickness of THIN human hair. This will all be sounding very familiar if you were with me two weeks ago when Hussein and I when through the exact same process in order to find the precise location of the base of each foot/mount so we could mark out the location of the holes for their respective bolts. This is a photo from that previous alignment and when we, hopefully, all get back to work on Nov. 30th we will do as Hussein is doing here and use thin feeler gauges to measure and ensure that the gap around the full circumference of where these two flanges mate, is exactly the same. I.e., they are perfectly parallel. To get there we go through the same adjustment procedure I outlined for getting the Pitch Push/Pull rod center aligned by sliding the feet Left/Right and/or turning the threaded adjustment nuts Up/Down.
I know this is not riveting stuff for almost any of you but this is such a critical part of having a smooth quiet Propulsion System that it gives me tremendous joy and satisfaction. Fortunately it is also not a process you need to go through very often so well worth the investment in time now.
FINISHING the EXTERIOR of the ALUMINIUM HULL
Nihat was the only member of Team Möbius on hand this four day week but he is one of our most relentless workers so he finished all his work on the Port/Left side of the hull and moved around the Bow to pick up where Uğur had left off last week.
You can see the multi stage process quite well in this shot. First the welds along each butt joint of the hull plates needs to be ground flat and flush such as you see running along Fore/Aft just below Nihat’s belt line. Then any work marks on the surface of the plate need to be ground off which leaves a finish like the one on the far Left here. This nose on shot of the Bow shows the Start/End of this whole process with Nihat just getting started on the Left side of this photo (Stbd/Right side of the hull) which is in contrast with the surface finish on the opposite side that he has fully finished with a random orbital sander. Here is a shot looking straight onto that same finished surface. The Waterline is about 200mm/8” above the weld at the bottom so that does not get fully ground down flush as this will all be covered wtih epoxy primer and International InterSleek 1100 foul release “Bottom Paint”, so we can use filler to get all the surfaces below the Waterline flat and smooth prior to painting these surfaces.
You Made this Bed; Now Lay in it!
None of our interior crew was available this week but the big memory foam mattress has been cut to size and the cover sewn up for over a month now and it was going to be much easier to get it onboard before they put in all the glass windows around the Pilot House/Super Salon so I was able to get a strapping young worker from the boat next to us helm me wrestle the mattress aboard.
As is often the case with boat beds, their sides are no parallel and this was the case with the Right side here as it runs parallel with the side walls that curve in with the hull. But Sinan our master upholsterer was able to quick cut the foam with his special electric knife and then resew the cut edge of the very nice mattress cover so it all fits in like a glove. It was actually much easier than I thought it might be. This is 30cm / 12” thick memory foam so we were able to bend it and flex it just enough to get it through the Entryway WT Door into the SuperSalon and then down that spiraling stairway into the Master Cabin in the background on the Left.
Captain Christine has not been able to be onboard for over a week so it will have to now wait until after Nov. 30th for her to come test it out.
When you get out of that Bed, Test out this Helm Chair!
For similar reasons I wanted to get both our big Llebroc Helm Chairs aboard before the glass company arrives next week to install all the SuperSalon glass windows and all the plexiglass windows around the whole upper SkyBridge.
We also moved the slightly different and just as cool Llebroc Bandera Series 2 Helm Chair into the Super Salon Helm Station but I didn’t get a chance to take any photos so you’ll have to wait till we get back onboard for me to show you that beauty.
LUBRICANTS!
It felt very good for me to be finally moving things like these Helm Chairs onboard to their final resting place as it makes the Launching of Möbius feel that much closer and real. I had the same feeling when I was also moving these three 18 litre/5 USG cans of hydraulic steering oil onboard on Friday. This will soon be filling up our 55L hydraulic steering oil tank that feeds our whole Kobelt steering system and I’ll show you that as it happens.
Next up were these three cans with almost 60 liters / 15 USG or one of my favorite engine oils; Shell Rimula R4X 15W-40. In addition to being a top quality engine oil I have found this to be one of the easiest brands to find most anywhere in the world as this is also commonly specified by the big diesel engine companies for use in tractors, trucks, cranes, etc. that are needed and used most everywhere.
I also moved all our anti-freeze onboard but didn’t get any photos, which I’m sure you are all so sad about. Not!!
And that’s all from your intrepid cub reporter here in Antalya Turkey for the week that was November 10 through 13th, 2020. Hope you enjoyed this week’s abbreviated posting and I will be back with more next week.
Please do keep your questions and comments coming by typing them into the “Join the Discussion” box below. They are eXtremely helpful and meaningful to both Christine and myself and MUCH appreciated. Thanks!
This will be a much shorter blog post than usual (lucky you!) as it was just a one day work week at Naval Yachts this week with them being closed from Nov. 3-10. However, as usual there was still some very exciting new developments and new arrivals this past week that both Christine and I are anxious to share with you. The theme this week seemed to be about “mounting” new items that have just been delivered such as mounts for pumps & alternators, mounting computers and mounting/installing glass walls and doors in the showers. Without further drivel from me, please grab a comfy chair and a good beverage and come along for this week’s Show & Tell here in Möbius.World.
SHOWERS: Works of Art & Engineering
I’ve been showing you for many months the progress in building the Heads and Showers in the Guest and Master Cabins and our extensive use of glass in both. This week all these glass panels were delivered to Naval Yachts so we can finally show you what the real thing looks like although you will have to wait for another week or two to see them fully installed aboard. For those that are new here or don’t remember, here is a quick rendering of the Master Cabin from the perspective standing in the Entryway door looking forward towards the Bow. Note the two glass plate walls that form the corner of the Shower in the background of this render. Switching locations, here is what it looks like when standing front and center in the Master Cabin looking Aft with the etched glass Shower wall corner in the foreground on the Right. We are SO grateful to be surrounded by so many talented family and friends who very generously and excitedly want to apply their many talents to features inside of Möbius. Here is one of the best examples; our dear friend Sherry Cooper in her AbFab apartment in downtown Vancouver B.C. working with us on the graphic designs to be etched into those glass corner wall panels. I have known Sherry and her husband Rick since we were teaching High School together on the Canadian jet fighter base in Baden Baden Germany in 1980-84 and to say that Sherry is talented is about as big of an understatement as I know how to make.
To find out more about Sherry and see what I meant check out her other works HERE and HERE as well as her Instagram page HERE. Christine and I worked with Sherry to describe as best we could what we wanted to achiever with these etched patterns which was things such as a marine/nautical theme, a taste of First Nation people’s art from the British Columbia area we know and love and to have all this captured in a somewhat abstract and ethereal way.
This is what Sherry came up with and we think the nailed it! A perfect example of our favorite Goldilocks; just right, just for us type of result. The sketches above are relatively small hand sketches and we needed to transmogrify these into much larger sizes and be in a CAD/CNC format for the etching work to be done. Hakan, one of our former Team Möbius members took on this task and created these two Vector based files in AutoCAD which we then sent to the glass etching company. The etching company used these vector files to CNC cut these shapes into white peel & stick vinyl which they then attached to the two glass panels and sent us this photo on WhatsApp to make sure this was what we wanted and then they went ahead and did the etching. Here are the finished panels that were just delivered with all the other glass panels stacked on top and set onto a table below Möbius for now as they await being carried onboard to be installed. To give you a bit better idea of what these etched panels actually look like, I slid the glass stacked on top off to the side a bit to shoot this for you and give you a bit better sense of the real thing.
Thank you SO much Sherry! We LOVE what you’ve done and we can’t wait for you and Rick to come join us and take over the Master Cabin so you can shower within your own “walls of art”. Back in the Guest Cabin we are keeping it a bit simpler with “just” a plain glass door for the Guest Shower that you can see in the stack of glass above and will also soon be installed.
Boat Computer #2
We need plenty of computer muscle to power all the sophisticated navigation software, equipment, monitoring and multiple monitors we have onboard the Good Ship Möbius and so Christine has been busy researching, specifying, ordering and building our two Boat Computers. She finished our primary PC a few months ago and this week the 2nd Boat Computer arrived from the US. This is a Kingdel fanless mini PC which Christine finally tracked down on Amazon US and had shipped over to us here in Antalya.
How fast is this new little guy? Well, Captain Christine, who is normally an Apple Gal I might add, said “It boots up faster than you can say Windows 10”
Our newest family member will live in the overhead space above the main Entryway beside the SkyBridge helm station which is what it will primarily power.
For our fellow Geeks and Geekettes out there, below is a peek inside and the basic specs:
Fanless, Smart Design, Full Metal Case, Silent Working, High Speed CPU & SSD, 2 Years Warranty.
Pre loaded with Window 10 Pro, complete with full license key for reinstalling.
This is Christine’s temporary techno test bench in our apartment where she has both Boat Computers hooked up to load up all the software and start configuring them all.
Boat Computer #1 is seen here underneath the table as it has a larger “desktop” size which provides much more space for multiple fans to keep things cool, more expansion board spaces and other advantages we wanted. It is “only’ an i7 9th generation processor but can run all six of our big monitors and will be our main “go to” computer when we are onboard. I thought this shot might give you a better perspective on the size differences although the Mini PC I am holding in the foreground appears larger than it really is due to being so much closer to you in this shot.
For those wondering, the black box on top is our Synology NAS or Network Access Storage. You can slide different hard drives and SSD’s into this box and right now we “only” have two 4TB hard drives in there but easily expandable and we just took note of two Western Digital drives that are 16TB each for just $200 so we will see if we need more storage and add as we do.
We use all this storage volume on our NAS to hold everything from our huge vaults of music and movies for our onboard entertainment and on them more serious side this also holds multiple sets of electronic charts for the whole world, satellite images, all our manuals for all our onboard equipment, all our software both personal productivity software such as MS Office and all our navigation software such as TimeZero, Coastal Explorer,
Why not just keep all this in the cloud? We do this too, but this NAS gives us direct access to everything without any internet connections at all. So this creates what you can think of as own personal “onboard cloud”.
Mounting Jabsco Sea Water Pump
For the Gardner engine cooling, I had wanted to install a keel cooler which is made by cutting lengths of aluminium pipe in half lengthwise and welding these to the outside of the hull with U-turns on the ends to create a continuous loop. The two In/Out ends are then welded through the hull and the engine coolant (anti-freeze + water mix) is circulated through this loop and transfers its heat out into the passing sea water. Super efficient, no extra pumps or moving parts required and I had this on our previous boat that worked great. However, for a variety of reasons Naval switched to a heat exchanger style which works like this. Sea water is drawn in through the Sea Chest and strainers by an engine driven sea water pump which then circulates the cool sea water through a variety of heat exchangers for the engine coolant, engine oil, transmission/CPP oil and finally goes to the wet exhaust to cool it and then the sea water goes out through the exiting sea chest back into the ocean. These heat exchanger style works fine and is on thousands of boats, just more complex and more moving parts as you can see. After some research we chose to go with a Bowman heat exchanger which are one of the world’s largest heat exchanger manufacturers based in the UK and they are beautifully made bits of kit to be sure. Here is a generic illustration showing how a heat exchanger works and it could not be more basic; cold sea water enters the large cylinder (Shell Inlet) and flows around all the smaller tubes inside picking up their heat and then exits out the other end (Shell Outlet). The liquid to be cooled enters the Tube Inlet and runs through all the small diameter rods or tubes that are surrounded y the colder sea water and then exits out the Tube Outlet having given up most of its heat. That inner “Tube Stack” as it is called is made out of Titanium in ours and you can see that it is simply a bunch of small diameter tubes which are bundled together and have liquid going into one end of each tube and then out the other. I didn’t want to take our Bowman’s apart but here is a similar model that will let you see how the Tube Stack fits inside the larger diameter heat exchanger body where the sea water flows. Sorry, not the greatest quality but best I could find in a pinch here late tonight but this should show you the basic layout and how the various liquids flow through a heat exchanger system.
As you can see this is all simple enough but it does require the addition of a sea water pump to pull in the sea water through the Intake Sea Chest in the Engine Room and then pump it out through all the various heat exchangers and then finally provide the sea water that is injected into the wet exhaust elbow to cool the exhaust gasses.
I chose this Jabsco 1 1/4” bronze pedestal base sea water pump as I have had these in previous boats and know them and their maintenance quite well. I like to “go with what I know” you know! The next bit of “complexity” is that we now need to mount this Jabsco sea water pump and figure out a way to have Mr. Gee drive it. Cihan has his hands more than full so I have taken on building this mounting system for the Jabsco pump. The Gardner 6LXB often had sea water pumps mounted on them so there is this very solid flat “pad” up at the very front Stbd/Right side of the massive cast aluminium crankcase with three good size mounting studs so that’s where I’ve designed a mounting system to be. Here is the top mounting bracket I came up with all ready to bolt onto that “pad” in the photo above. Not quite up to Gardner standards perhaps but I assure you it will last as long as Mr. Gee will, aka forever! Difficult to photograph for you but this is what the test fit assembled mount looks like. The thick AL plate at the top is what is bolted to that pad you saw above which then has the tall thick vertical AL mounting bar bolted to it at the top and an L-bar bracket for the bottom support where I used three bolts on the Sump (oil pan) to hold the bottom of the mounting bar.
The Jabsco sea water pump will bolt about half way along the length of the mounting bar and will be driven by a timing belt type of rubber belt off the Gardner’s crankshaft which you can see off to the mid right side of this photo.
Here is a different view from up above.
The big cast bronze housing is the engine oil heat exchanger which just clears the AL top plate of the upper mounting plate.
The large round cast AL item on the bottom Left with the copper tube snaking upward here is Mr. Gee’s coolant water pump that is internally driven off the camshaft. For the curious and observant of you, the large diameter black disc resting on the crankshaft is the chainwheel for Mr. Gee’s hand start cranking system which I will show you more of later. OK, that’s it for this week folks. Sorry it is so short and that we get a much longer work week this week and have more to show you in the next Möbius.World Progress Update Show & Tell. Christine and I have had a VERY busy weekend and all day today (Monday) helping out two other couples who may become future new XPM owners. One couple via a lengthy video call (thanks Andrew & Lili) and the other couple who are long time circumnavigating sailors who are here in Turkey for the winter and drove over to spend the weekend with us here in Antalya to meet the people at Naval Yachts and get a full tour of the Free Zone and Möbius. We had a great time with Wade & Diane who have such a similar history as Christine and myself and we have just said goodbye for now as they head back to their boat which is about a 3 hour drive West along the coast to Alanya. Great to meet up with you Wade & Diane and look forward to more such visits.
And thanks to all of YOU who chose to join us here on the Möbius.World blog every week. We really appreciate having you along for the ride and for all your questions and comments that you write in the “Join the Discussion” box below. Please keep them coming, we prize them highly.
This week’s Progress Update is like they used to say on Sesame Street “Brought to you by the letter F” as Team Möbius worked on installing the FIRE Suppression System, FANS for extracting air out of the boat and getting Mr. Gee and his new literal Mate the Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox all mounted on their six FEET as well as aligned with the CPP Prop Shaft. Even though there was 1.5 days holiday in the middle of this week for the big Turkish Republic Day on Wednesday and Thursday, our Team was very productive and got lots done so grab a favorite beverage and chair and join me for this week’s Show & Tell of all this Fun work that got done.
FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM:
If you were with us last week you will recall seeing Cihan and Hilmi installing and wiring up the Sea-Fire Automated Fire Suppression System components. This week Hilmi picked up with installing all the wires, making all the connections and testing the automated system out. This is the “brains” of the Sea-Fire system with all the relays for the various shut downs and “firing” the fire extinguisher.
Inside all other parts of the boat we simply have very good manual fire extinguishers which are these cool new type from Maus.
However in the Engine room we and the various ABYC/ISO/CE standards require a fully automated Fire Suppression SYSTEM.
In addition to looking after the automatic triggering of the release of the 3M Novec 1230 extinguishing agent this system must also shut down the engine, close all the vent dampers, turn off the venting fans and sound the alarm. This can also all be triggered manually with a Morse pull cable. Hilmi and Uğur worked closely together as they needed to coordinate between Hilmi laying out the locations on the Port side wall of the Workshop where he wanted to mount the Sea-Fire control box and where he wanted Uğur to cut the slots in the Alucobond panels. The other Bronze box is one of the Kobelt engine control boxes and Hilmi now has the cables pulled through the wall panel slots below where he will be mounting the Sea-Fire control box. He will install the Sea-Fire controller inside this waterproof plastic junction box to keep everything all tucked away and well protected but first he needed to drill all these holes for the cable glands. Here is that junction box with the Sea-Fire box inside now mounted to the wall. Now that the Alucobond wall panels were in place Uğur could install the mounting screws through them into the aluminium frames behind.
The row of Black and Violet boxes up above are part of the Maretron monitoring system and Uğur will later install the L shaped AlucoBond corners to protect them. With the cables all pulled thorough their WT glands and the labels attached, Hilmi could strip the cable cover off to release the individual wires and start making all the connections to the control box for the different shut down relays and other controls. The standards also require that there be a control and indicator lights at the Main Helm which is where this round version is headed. For testing purposes we just used that short ethernet RJ45 cable.
This remote confirms that the Fire Suppression system is On and working properly before it will allow you to start the engine and also allows you to set off the whole system from here as well as silence the alarm. That round remote control head will soon be installed in the angled dashboard up at the Main Helm amongst these other controls.
Once Hilmi and I had it all tested and all was working fine, the Grey ethernet cable you can see plugged in here, goes up to the Main Helm dashboard where the round controller will be mounted a bit later. And that’s it! Everything all buttoned up and ready for more testing.
LIGHTS!
More lights went in this week including these beautiful beasts which are Hella LED flood lights.
This one will be mounted to the front “mast'” or arch at the Bow to light up the waters directly in front of us and others will be mounted to light up the water along both sides and off the rear of the boat. These Hella Work Lights are a thing of pure beauty and joy to my heart and mind not only for their incredible candlepower but their Black bodies are ribbed cast aluminium and that bracket is all 316 stainless. What’s not to love?!! We also have several of these Italian made Osculati Faro LED spot lights for when we want a more narrow beam to go greater distances. Similar to the Hella lights these ribbed bodies are also all cast aluminium with SS mounting hardware and epoxy sealed wiring to help them survive and thrive in the harsh marine environments and weather we will be subjecting everything to. More “Hella a light” was the arrival of these two LED lights on flexible stalks that will be mounted at each helm for when we need to read something up close. These have both a bright white LED as well as a dimmer Red light to help retain our night vision when on passages. As exciting as all those other lights are to me, THESE are the ones that really make my day as these are my working lights inside my Workshop, Forepeak and Engine Room.
For me and I think most others, there is nothing that beats having GREAT lighting when you are working and these babies are truly amazing in how much bright white light they blast out into all the spaces where I work aboard. All those lumens are augmented all the more as they bounces off all those White Alucobond surfaces on all the walls and ceilings such that the whole space is eXtremely well lit. Just wait till we peel off all that protective plastic film and these surfaces are pure White Light!
For those interested, here is a shot of the back of one of these LED work lights. They would have thousands of great applications and are highly recommended by this worker.
TOWERS of SHOWERS!
Cihan was his usual Productive Plumber self again this week and he has now has these gleaming Stainless Steel “shower towers” all plumbed and working.
This is a slightly different model than ours but it will help you visualize what they look like in action. If I don’t come out of shower session with this then I must be doing something really wrong. To say nothing of how much fun our GrandKids will have with it as there is a matching unit in the Guest Cabin Shower. Which looks like this. The new fittings he needed arrived this week so Cihan was also able to finish mounting these beautiful SS towel wormers that are another work of art and engineering to me. There are also two matching units of these towel warmers, one in the Guest Bathroom and one that will go on the far wall you see here in the Master Bathroom. The four smaller holes you see here (click to enlarge) are for the SS mounting tubes and then the larger ones on the bottom are the threaded SS fittings where the PEX hot water lines emerge. These Turkish made beauties are just fabulous to work with and this square bodied tap to turn the hot water on/off is another good example of the “little things” that make all the difference with both their solid heft being solid SS as well as the squared off design which has them blend into the overall sculptured look and give no indication that they are also functioning taps. One step back to show you the whole towel warmer. And a few more steps back to show you the whole Shower and Bathroom space. The etched glass walls that will form the corner of the Shower where I am standing to take this picture are due to arrive next week and just wait till you see how this space looks with them all installed and lit up! The Bio-Bidet 1000 on our VacuFlush toilets are now all installed along with their controls. This controller is wireless and clips into a small plastic hanger on the side of the cabinet. Or you can run the basic functions with the SS control head you see on the aft left side of the seat and see that all is working well with the LED indicator lights on the Right.
I received a number of queries and comments about these bidet units so I will let the following pictures do all the talking to answer those. Human contact required to avoid any “surprises” when curious onlookers are checking things out. And you can study this better shot of the remote controller to figure out the rest.
Oh, and yes, there is a matching unit for all our guests in their cabin too. Elsewhere in the Master Cabin, Serkan has the templates for the two mirrors on these cabinet drawers temporarily attached to check that they are the just right size before they get sent off to the glass and mirror shop. And he is also making up similar templates for the other mirrors in our Master Cabin such as this one on the inside of the Cabin Entrance door.
eXhausting!
Cihan also received the 127mm / 5” ID exhaust hose this week so he got starting installing the first short length underneath the Day Tank on the Starboard / Right side of the Workshop. This relatively short length hose, about 1.2m / 4 ft, connects to the AL pipe welded into the Engine Room wall on the far Left and carries the exhaust gasses over and out the same size AL pipe welded into the side of the hull. These special rubber hoses are able to safely carry the exhaust gasses because they have all been well cooled by the sea water injected into the hot exhaust gas up at the top of the Engine Room.
eXtraction is eXhausting TOO!
As you can see, it was all hands on deck quite literally as the boys got to installing all the extraction fans and dampeners inside the Vent Boxes on the Aft Deck. This is the Stbd/Right side Vent Box where the large rectangular ducts coming up out of the Workshop and the Engine Room exit and there is an extraction fan for each one. This is the Vent Box on the Port/Left side where the opening on the upper Left goes all the way down to the floor of the Engine room and keeps Mr. Gee well fed with clean fresh air. The slotted square on the bottom Right is for the extraction of air out of the Guest Cabin.
The box on its side near the middle directly in front of the slotted opening is one of the demister or mist eliminator units which removes most of the salty humidity in the air before it heads down into the ER. More on that in a moment.
Here is a close shot of the upside down box in the lower Right foreground above and this is an example of how the various extraction fans are attached to their outer facing mounting plates which bolt to the Vent Boxes. Like this. This is an upside down Dampener that Uğur is attaching to its mounting plate which then bolts to the Vent Boxes similar to the extraction fans.
These Dampeners are installed on both the Intake Supply Air going into the Engine Room as well as the Extracted Air being pulled out and they are normally in the closed position so that no salty air is getting into the ER when we are not running Mr. Gee which dramatically reduces the consequences of salty air in the ER most of the time. Here is what one of those Dampeners looks like when mounted into the Vent Box. The Orange box on the far Left of the Dampener is the motorized automated controller that Open/Closes the Dampener plate. And the White round cover you can just make out on the Left side of the Vent Box is to provide access to our hand if you ever need to manually Open/Close the Dampener. Over on the opposite side Vent Box, the Dampener is mounted vertically inside the long rectangular duct mentioned above that takes the fresh air down to the bottom of the Engine Room. Dampener door is closed as you can see in this photo and as part of the start up procedure these dampeners are rotated open by their 24V electric motors and stay that way until just after we shut Mr. Gee down OR when the Sea-Fire system shuts everything down in the case of a fire. I’ve received quite a few questions about these Mist Eliminators or Demisters which remove most of the salty humidity from the air before it goes inside the ER so here are a few close up shots so you can see how these work. This is the rear view and basically the way these work is that these black plastic vanes inside force the air to flow through a convoluted path where the water droplets condense out of the air. Hard to capture on camera but these Black plastic vanes are very complex somewhat wave like shapes inside with equally complex surfaces. These are all the result of years of research and testing apparently to perfect their ability to extract all that harmful salty water vapour which then runs out the little SS drain hole you can just make out in the bottom center of this photo. There is then a plastic tube that takes this extracted water down to the Sea Chest in the ER and back out to sea where it belongs.
See what I mean? eXhausting right?!!
PROPULSION SYSTEM ALIGNMENT:
Lastly for this week let me show you a bit about the night shift I’ve been on this past week working with some expert motor and CPP propulsion system aligners from another shipyard next door. Meet Emre on the Left, Hussein standing on the Right and that arm in the lower Right is ………….
…….. Hayretttin who is busy choosing the right 0.05mm feeler gauge as we are about to alight the output flange of the Nogva Servo Gearbox with the matching flange on the CPP Propeller Shaft.
Of course you have all met Mr. Gee, our Gardner 6LXB many times by now so he needs no introduction. I won’t go into too much detail on this whole alignment process as it is likely not of too much interest to most, but here is what we are working on. The Red flange on the Right side here is attached as you can see to the forward end of the big 65mm OD propeller shaft going aft to the 4 bladed CPP propeller, and the matching Maroon painted flange that it is now butted up against is the flange on the Output shaft of the Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox. The goal is to get the inner faces where these two flanges come together PERFECTLY lined up. After several hours of wrangling the now solidly connected Mr. Gee and Nogva Servo Gearbox assembly into position such that the center of both of those flanges perfectly line up, we now need to use the threaded rods on the six different “feet”, or flexible mounts, four of which attach Mr. Gee to the 25mm thick Engine Beds and then two which similarly attach the Nogva Gearbox to those same Engine Beds.
We use very thin 0.05mm / .002 inch feeler gauges to check 360 degrees around where these two flanges meet as this is the maximum allowable difference allowed. Zero space between them is ideal which we pretty much achieved by nights end with ever smaller adjustments to these six mounting feet. Prior to all this, I had done that centering I mentioned above to get the Push/Pull Pitch rod with the male threaded end poking out of the center of the Prop Shaft on the Right, exactly lined up with the female threaded piston extending out of the Output Flange on the Nogva Gearbox on the Left. There is a hydraulic pump inside the Servo Gearbox, hence the name, which pushes that piston forward and aft as you move the Pitch control lever at both helms. This in turn moves that Pitch Control Push/Pull rod fore and aft which is what is translated into rotational movement inside the hub at the center of the CPP Propeller which thus rotates each of the four prop blades in synch with each other to vary the pitch of the prop from zero which would be like “neutral” no thrust to the boat fore or aft and then at our choosing either rotating the blades and thus increasing their pitch to push the boat either forward or reverse.
Using a dial gauge I was able to move Mr. Gee + Nogva assembly to put the center of that output piston spot on the center of that threaded push/pull rod inside the prop shaft and then rotate the Nogva output flange to thread the rod into it.
There is a precise measurement of how far to thread that rod in so that the pitch rod is centered in its travel which is what you see here, and then I could tighten this lock nut to hold it in that position.
Once this was all done I could mount the two halves of that Red prop shaft flange and do the alignment I described above. Et voila! A perfectly aligned Engine, Servo Gearbox and CPP prop shaft!
Now we take it all apart again after carefully marking the position of the mounting bolt holes in each of the six flexible feet as we need to lift the whole assembly up in the air to give us enough room to drill all those holes in the Engine Bed for those bolts. Next week’s night shift will be doing this and then going through the whole alignment procedure one last time and then bolting the six feet down to their final positions.
I know this is riveting stuff so do stay tuned for all that excitement next week!
Hope this wasn’t all too boring and that you will consider joining us again next week.
There were a bunch more milestones this week but the biggest one for Christine and I was to see this truck load of glass from Hakan Glass here in Antalya, arrive with all the glass that will close in the whole Pilothouse.*
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